


Chicken Roast, Chicken Ghost

by syrupwit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Chickens, Gen, Ghosts, Trick or Treat 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/pseuds/syrupwit
Summary: Partial history of a haunted artifact.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloria_scott](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloria_scott/gifts).



Though he was personally a man of few scruples, Dr. Alfred P. Nettlesworth could recognize when he had offended them in others. Now -- as he fled the remote moonlit graveyard with his arms full of pilfered treasures, while portentous clucks gathered force in the distance -- was one of these instances.

Dr. Nettlesworth raced to his van. Feathers rustled close behind him. He dumped his ill-gotten gains in the passenger seat, scrambled across the cab, and fumbled sweatily with his seatbelt. The clucks were approaching, growing in volume. They threatened to reach a crescendo. Dr. Nettlesworth jammed the keys in the ignition, released the parking brake, and floored it, peeling off into the darkness.

The dust left in his wake settled, slowly. As the light of earliest morning crept over the graveyard, tiny, three-pointed footprints appeared in the dirt.

Somewhere in the gloom, a rooster crowed.

\--

The antique shop owner was unimpressed with his wares.

“They’re one of a kind,” Dr. Nettlesworth ventured. “Nothing else out there quite like these.”

“Hmm,” the antique shop owner said, squinting through her jeweller’s loupe.

“Vintage,” Dr. Nettlesworth added. “Priceless.”

“Trash,” the antique shop owner proclaimed. “Trash, trash, garbage, like everything you bring me.” She set the jeweller’s loupe aside. Her hand hovered over the pile of artifacts, and her gaze zeroed in on one piece in particular. “Except for this.”

She held up a silver ring. It was plain, unremarkable-looking, except for the design that had been picked out on top: the noble and oddly pointy silhouette of a rooster...

While it would have been a stretch to say that the ring emanated menace, there was a distinctly unhealthy feeling in the air as Dr. Nettlesworth accepted payment from the antique shop owner. Later that day, he would ditch the remainder of his graverobbing spoils in a bin meant for donations to a local charity thrift store, which alleviated some of his guilt, unfair as that may be; but for the rest of his life he was unable to eat eggs, and experienced a vague but persistent sense of unease around farmers, barns, and bulk dry goods.

\--

For about a week, the ring languished in the antique store’s jewelry display case without incident. Then, the haunting began.

The antique shop owner -- for convenience, she will be referenced hereinafter as Virginia Elms, as that was her name -- awoke late one night to the sound of an incoming fax message. Ms. Elms’ fax machine had sat unplugged in her spare room for years, in the apartment where she lived above the shop. Still, enveloped in the haze of being awakened unexpectedly between the hours of two and three a.m., she did not remember this fact.

Ms. Elms lurched out of bed and down the hall. The fax machine continued to emit an infernal dialing sound. She flung open the spare room door and found the floor carpeted with printed pages. More were in progress. A dull red glow lit the room, its source indiscernible. Ms. Elms stooped to examine a page.

“CLUCK,” the printout read. “CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.”

Ms. Elms went for the fax machine’s cord and found it already unplugged. The red glow intensified, bathing the still-printing pages in uncomfortable light. That loathsome dialing sound increased in volume, while Ms. Elms perceived a strange chill in the room. Then came a hum -- a rustling -- a noise like the simultaneous ruffling of many collections of small, densely packed feathers. A familiar pointy shadow loomed on the wall…

Adrenaline coursing through her veins, Ms. Elms opened the window and hefted the fax machine onto the sill. She gave it a shove, and it toppled. Someone squawked in offense.

Ms. Elms went back to bed.

\--

The haunting progressed. Though the fax machine had been vanquished, the same eerie red light appeared in the spare room at night. Ms. Elms began receiving hang-up calls, with the only noise on the other end being a light, barely perceptible scratching sometimes interspersed with ominous clucks. Feathers appeared in unusual places. Customers complained of being pecked. And then there were the chicken sightings.

Ms. Elms made several attempts to get rid of the cursed ring. She tried washing it down the drain, melting it in the fireplace, and throwing it in the dumpster, but it always showed up again the next morning, glowering up at her from the same spot in the jewelry display case. The rooster apparition was more aggressive after these incidents, too. Ms. Elms came to dread the sound of crowing.

Then, one day, a pleasant young man came to the shop. He spent half an hour browsing the collection of novelty salt-and-pepper shakers, made five minutes’ appreciative small talk with Ms. Elms, and purchased the ring for his fiancé. His fiancé, he informed her, loved chickens. “He has a passion for them.” A doomed passion, it turned out; the fiancé was allergic to live poultry. But it didn’t matter anyway, because they lived in an apartment in the city and couldn’t have pets. Ms. Elms agreed that it was tragic, and they both laughed.

He really had been very pleasant, Ms. Elms reflected the next day, as she stared at the gap in the display case where the ring had once rested.

\--

The Phantom of Apartment #548A was not a universally beloved figure. He ate people’s balcony plants, left bits of ectoplasm lying around after preening, and possessed an uncanny ability to time his first morning crow with the moment that certain insomniac tenants deemed themselves finally able to sleep. Even Mario and Jonathan, the other current inhabitants of Apartment #548A, had to concede that his tiny little beady red eyes could be kind of unsettling, especially when they were the only source of light in a room.

Despite these shortcomings, however, the Phantom was generally considered “a good chicken.” People fed him strawberries and wondered where they went. Children asked to pet him, and were carefully monitored while doing so. Those who objected most strenuously to his less attractive habits found themselves admitting that it was endearing the way he strutted around, and sort of creepily cute how he’d roll around in the dust without disturbing it. All in all, it seemed that the ghost had found a home.

And, on certain moonlit nights, if the Phantom's voice joined those of a flock of spectral hens far across town, and the graveyard's dirt trembled and the bulk dry goods at the local organic grocery store rattled in their bins... Well, it wasn't hurting anyone.


End file.
